Minister of State for communications Manoj Sinha in Lok Sabha on Wednesday told MP Virender Kashyap that all villages adopted by the Member of Parliaments under 'Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna', will be provided free WiFi services across India by the Government.
He told that the government has proposed to set up 25000 WiFi hotspots at existing rural exchanges of BSNL through comprehensive telecom development plan and in future, all other agencies/pvt telecom operators will be engaged to provide WiFi services to every panchayat across India.
He told that the government has targeted to link each of the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats of India through optical fibre network under Bharat Net Project .
According to Sinha, one lakh gram panchayats have been connected under Digital India programme in phase one upto December 2017 and an additional 1.5 lakh panchayats will be connected with high-speed internet by March 2019.
He said that 1,13,091 gram panchayats have been connected with high-speed internet by July 15.
Department has executed a project for providing mobile services in the identified location in ten states affected by left-wing extremism, he informed Kashyap.
Under this project, 2355 location in left-wing extremism area were taken up for installation of towers in phase one and told that as of now a total of 2335 mobiles towers are radiating in these areas.
He told that a total of 4072 towers will be installed in the second phase of the project, which has been approved by the government on May 23.
Kashyap demanded the minister to expedite the Bharat Net project services expeditiously in hilly areas especially in Himachal Pradesh where power grid has been given this task of connecting this broadband services which are going at a very slow pace.
He demanded that power grid may be asked to work expeditiously so as to provide these services within the stipulated time period of March 2019.
The minister assured him that the government will take positive steps for completion of the project in hilly areas in time bound manner.
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